ClaphamFox

There are undoubtedly those on the right who would dearly like to finish the BBC off, as you say. The problem is, the BBC has gifted its enemies a huge arsenal of ammunition with which to attack it— not just with the Panorama fiasco, but with the other areas highlighted in the Prescott report. And while you are correct that true impartiality is likely impossible to achieve, that does not mean it should not be attempted. The entire justification for the license fee is that the BBC is different—better— than other news organisations. If it is shown to be just as unashamedly partisan as everyone else, it becomes much harder to make a case for it. I really hope the BBC survives this and becomes stronger because I still believe it has a vital role to play, but it has created one hell of a mess for itself.

O'Neil would be a disaster. I was hoping Southampton would remove him from the field before our next manager search, but their fans have rebelled over his history with Portsmouth and it probably won't happen. Wolves looked like they would go back for him initially, but their fans rebelled over his history of being a terrible manager and that also didn't happen. He'll get a job somewhere else eventually—I just hope it happens before we give Marti the boot...

This piece on the crisis at the BBC by Mark Urban, who worked there for 35 years, sheds light on the difficulty of maintaining a commitment to impartiality and balance when younger members of staff are increasingly activist in their outlook. Key paragraphs: "For most of the time I worked on Newsnight a lively spirit of contrarianism, an ability to set aside one’s own prejudices, a commitment to seeking a diversity of views, and having a longer production day in which to debate a topic, worked in our favour. It was balanced on most issues, particularly domestic politics. "But more recently, and in common with every other big developed world news organisation I know, generational change brought a younger, more dirigiste kind of progressivism onto the team. The language of ‘lived experience’, ‘don’t be a bystander’, and formulas such as ‘silence is violence’, entered the editorial conversation."

Tim Davie has resigned from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd9kqz1yyxkt

And one commonly deployed by governments early in the electoral cycle.

The next general election doesn’t have to be held until August 2029. Provided it is willing to take a hammering in the local elections, Labour might calculate that it can afford to take some unpopular measures now and still have enough time to claw back support over the next three-and-half years or so.

After our 3-1 win at Swansea I received a lengthy text message from a Swansea-supporting friend going on about how we were ‘levels above’ anybody else they’d played this season and were certs for automatic promotion. Even Coventry fans acknowledged we were the best team they’d played this season after they were lucky to go home with a point against us. The promise was there earlier in the season - something has gone very badly wrong since.

It will be interesting to see how long Southampton’s revival lasts if/when they appoint Gary O’Neil.

James is clearly not a number 10 and playing him there is waste given how effective he is playing deeper. Page has promise but is very young and looked a bit lost when he played there earlier in the season. Briggs hasn’t played a minute of first team football. Alves has been loaned to a League One club for a reason, is injury prone and usually plays as a winger anyway. Are you really sure that any of the above are better replacements for Ramsey than BDCR?

So who would you play at number 10 given that Ramsey is injured and the only other natural player we have in that position is BDCR?

I'd argue that third after nine games and three points off the top was a reasonably promising start.

If we lose tomorrow I don't see how Cifuentes can survive. Even a draw will leave him perilously close to the brink. And if he goes, we can all look forward to yet another manager coming in who makes a moderately promising start before the squad turns on him, our form tanks again and we all stat speculating about when he'll be sacked and replaced.

I have a lot of respect for The Doctor because he always tries to argue his case, and he does it very well. However, most of what he posts is highly contentious and does not represent scientific consensus. He position on this issue is that of an activist, not a disinterested scientist. That does not mean he shouldn't be listened to—far from it—but I'm not sure his opinion carries quite the objective weight you seem to ascribe to it. Regarding the wider point, I suspect that when we return to a position of sanity on this issue, tragic cases like that of Brianna Ghey will become less likely, not more. And to clarify, by 'a position of sanity', I mean a general acceptance that a minority of people prefer to present in a way typically associated with the opposite sex and they should be allowed to do this without being bullied, harassed or discriminated against for it, but that this does not automatically mean that everybody else should be compelled to make profound changes to law, policy and language to accommodate it. I suspect Stonewall's 'no debate' stance on this issue has done far more harm than good (any movement whose core objective seems to be to aggressively compel people to lie about what they see and believe is always likely to run into trouble). The BBC's willingness to be heavily influenced by Stonewall has got it into a very difficult spot that it still clearly struggling with. I'm an optimist by nature and I think that one day we will return to a more sane place on this issue and all the toxicity that surrounds it will become a distant memory.

I doubt any sane person could say the phrase ‘pregnant people’ without pulling a face.

It's not that long ago that the fans of some of the teams we played - Birmingham, Oxford, Swansea - were describing us as the best team they'd played so far. We've gone from showing a lot of promise but just lacking a cutting edge, to being utterly devoid of confidence and ideas while still lacking a cutting edge. It just feels like any belief the players had in Marti's tactics has completely drained away and taken all their confidence with it.

More of a girl-fronted band than a girl band, but these were superb back in the day:

This simple fact is becoming clearer and clearer. Unfortunately there are no credible reports that he intends to go any time soon. This could get a lot worse before it gets better.

Have you lost six games in a row? Are you the relegation zone? Is your manager under severe pressure? Then take Leicester!

I've so far resisted the theory that Nelson has been frozen out because Marti is being given orders from above over team selection as I struggle to believe that any football club would choose to do something so utterly moronic and self-defeating. But if Nelson drops out on Saturday, then I'll have to admit that I was wrong and there really is a club stupid enough to do that—and it's us.

Is it on the telly?

The only thing that list shows is that the bookies don't have a clue on this one.

Scenes when he doesn't even make the bench again

It is clearly not something that is easily addressed and I confess I don't have a simple answer. However I still believe—perhaps naïvely—that the truth finds a way of coming out eventually, and we're more likely to reach that point sooner if those who believe in fighting the good fight continue to do so.

I simply don't agree with this. There are two separate questions here: 1) Did Trump encourage the Jan 6 riots?; and 2) Did the BBC deliberately falsify evidence to support its case that Trump encouraged the riots? I think these questions can and must be separated. In a world in which—as @Bellend Sebastian says— it is increasingly difficult to obtain the truth from mainstream media sources, the BBC has, rightly or wrongly, retained a reputation for being more reliable and trustworthy than most. If this story turns out to be true, this reputation will take a major hit. It will mean that the next time the BBC uncovers a genuine scoop about some previously unreported criminal activity by Trump (say, related to Epstein), it will be much easier for Trump's defenders to dismiss the story by saying, "You can't believe these guys—look how they faked the Panorama footage". Surely you can see that this matters? If the one media outlet that we believed—well, hoped—was above the fray of partisan bullshit turns out to be just as prone to lying as everybody else, then we'll just slip further into a world in which objective reality becomes practically impossible to determine. The tragic thing about all this is that you could easily make a very strong case that Trump encouraged the riots without faking the evidence—it would have required more work to put together a carefully constructed argument, but at least it would have been true. Unfortunately it seems this was too much effort for the Panorama producers. I think that's a great shame.

The Telegraph article states they will begin quoting from the internal memo soon, so this is clearly a story they intend to string out. Regardless of whether any of us believe that Trump encouraged the rioters (personally I believe he did), this story is incredibly damaging to the BBC. It suggests that its journalists have grossly and deliberately misled the viewers of its flagship documentary programme. If the story is untrue, you’d expect the BBC to issue a robust denial imminently, but for some reason it hasn’t done so yet.